Here There Be Dragons;

Today was a bit discombobulated (which raises the question - am I ever combobulated?)  I didn't have any clear plans for today besides tidying up a bit (the trunk that I use for a coffee table is piled up and sliding to the floor.)  And I just felt unmotivated - more on that later.

So spent a couple of hours during/after breakfast chatting with Ebaida - covering things like the current political situation here to the American Civil war to slavery to some cute music videos.  I love that woman.

But I finally got up and On With My Day.  I'm almost out of my seedy bread, so I got that started (it's the kind of bread that you mix up and then let sit and do it's thing for a few hours before baking)  Then I remembered that I needed to do the trash run - the dump won't be open again until Friday and I'm out of space in the trash can for empty cat food tins.  There is no "putting trash in an outside can" around here - I can bungee a can to try to keep raccoons out, but that's less that successful with bears.

But trash days are also "clean the squirrel cage day" so did that first.  Then I remembered that I still had 50 pound bags of chicken feed and cat litter in the car that had to be dispensed into buckets.  Somewhere around this time I got a call from a friend because he hadn't talked to me for awhile (in Greg's case, this means "talk at you" but he's pretty interesting and with the joy of speaker phones I got a basket of laundry put away).  By then I needed lunch.  Trash run finally done.

Back home, I got another "talk at me" call from Rob, because they had given Zeke his birthday present of taking a flying lesson (pretty cool, right?)  Got more stuff done during that call.

Noticed that my bread wasn't rising at all.  Wondered for a moment if my yeast was dead.  Realized that I had forgotten to put it in.  I mixed it with a little water and squished it in as well as possible; it's rising now (amazing how that works)

But on to Dragons!  Our library had a Cosmic Con - a fun event with all kinds of tables and games and a costume contest.  It's a way to get families into the library.  The theme was "Here There Be Dragons" so of course I had to take my dragon puppet.

It was, of course, a hit.  People (adults as well as kids) love interacting with a puppet.  And, honestly, I love being the center of attention when it's not actually me who's getting it.

To make it more fun, I went up to a woman to admire her costume (a swamp witch with an opossum on her shoulder) and before I could say anything she goes "I know you!!"  She used to work at the museum 7 or 8 years ago.  So the two swamp witches hung out with each other, and we even joined in the costume parade that was wending it's way around all the library shelves.  It was silly and fun.

But today?   A little rough - because it isn't.  August 25th is our 51st wedding anniversary.  Last year I stressed for the week approaching it.  Lots of tears.  Made a special meal.  Opened the 50 year old bottle of wine.  Bought myself a cake. Cried some more.

But 51 seems anticlimactic.  Almost, but not quite, just another day.  I hadn't even planned anything special (I was more involved with getting ready for the library thing - I was altering last week's medieval dress to hold the fake arm and use the puppet.)  

But this picture popped up in my FaceBook memories.

I had posted this picture 6 years ago, in 2018, with the glib caption of "45 years.  So far, so good."

Yeah.  The innocence of that twists me up.  We didn't know that by our 46th anniversary we would be spending most of our time either in the oncology clinic, or going back and forth to Shands.  We didn't know that I would celebrate our 47th, and every one after that, alone.

The hardest years for me to think about are 2018 and the first half of 2019.  I look at pictures and memories and the word "innocence" keeps coming back to me.  We lived, and loved, and raised baby squirrels and opossums, went kayaking, took afternoon naps, had coffee together, played Jeopardy.  We just didn't know how little time we had left together.

I think I said it best on a post that I made in a previous anniversary:

I miss you.
I love you.

Thank you.

Empty Spaces; Going Medieval

 And yet another dozen days go by with no urge to write.  2025 self is going to be annoyed if I keep this up.

Hit with another unexpected trigger.  I got an email from Honda about my Fit. It read, in part "Five years ago you brought home your Fit and opened the door to adventures around every bend."  To which I yelled, "Well, SCREW YOU!!"

Buying that car was an attempt to grasp at a little bit of control after the world got jerked out from under us.  Five years ago was when we started making numerous trips back and forth to Gainesville.  And, if things had gone according to plan, while he was in recovery I would have been makes numerous trips back and forth by myself.  Although we both loved our 20-year-old Honda, and it was still running fine, we thought that maybe we should get something a little newer and safer, so we traded in Dad's Infinity and got the Fit.

The "adventures" were not what I had in mind.  In fact, after I came home I went back to driving the old Honda and merely glared at the new one for six months.

The other hit was FaceBook memories - this one from 6 years ago, where I talked about how Bob and I went to a tiny local theater to watch MST3K and eat huge buckets of popcorn.  Now it seems so innocent.  We had no idea that a year after that we'd be driving back and forth to Gainesville instead.

Last post I mentioned that I had a medieval event (SCA - Society for Creative Anachronism) to go to.  I had the date off by a week - so that gave me time to finish the costume.  The event wasn't quite what I expected; I knew there would be some sword fighting, but I also thought there would be other stuff - like singing, or dancing, or carousing at the feast table.  But it was held in a gym on the basketball court - sort of lacking in ambience.  And no singing, dancing, or feasting.  I did have someone show me how to make a Roman style safety pin.

(and no,no pictures of me in my new costume.  Somehow the basketball court wasn't inspiring)

I've found myself thinking about spaces - or gaps.  Empty areas.  There is often the human need to fill a space (the old "nature abhors a vacuum") but I have been exploring - or at least thinking about - empty spaces.  Of course, there is that large emptiness that used to be filled by Bob - there are still times that I sleep on the couch because I can't handling the yawning chasm of his side of the bed.  There are spaces that demand to be filled - like the rather small but really annoying one in my mouth.  I had been having a lot of problems with one of my molars for years (OK, a decade or two).  It was getting to the point that it really couldn't be recrowned - and the old crown would come off periodically.  Then came the point when we were getting ready to go stay in Gainesville for Bob's treatment, and it came off again, and I went to my dentist and said "I can't be having with this - pull the damned thing."  He didn't want to - he tried to tell me if the crown came off in Gainesville I could find a dentist to put it back on.  Nope - I wanted to focus on Bob, so the tooth went.  My plan was to get the bridge in before we left but the timing wasn't right - and when I came back it was Covid time so no having someone hanging around in my mouth.  I know many people who have lost a tooth and the gap doesn't bother them; my dentist told me there was no danger to having a hole that far back.  But I hated that damned gap and *finally* got my bridge in a year later.

How's that for meandering?  I wrote awhile back about giving away a loom that was in the cottage.

My plan was to move an empty bookshelf (used to hold Bob's hundreds of T-shirts in milk crates) from the bedroom to that spot.  But even though the loom wasn't that big (30" x 30", 55" tall) the room seems somehow so much more open having that bit of unfilled space (I did put my bench there)

I don't really need more storage (but if I put shelves there, they would certainly fill up) so I'll just leave it as is.

The other gap is where the missile picture was (the one I sent to the missile guy).  Rather than having pictures on the wall, Bob had built me a couple of picture rails where I can just put up (and overlap, and rearrange) pictures at will.  We did that 7 or 8 years ago, so the picture has been there since then.  Now there's a gap.

I have other pieces hanging out in a closet, and something will go there.  But that picture had been in the family for 60 years, and I didn't want to fill up its space too quickly and thoughtlessly.

Time for a few less philosophical thoughts.  One was the celebration - one of my new chicks laid her first egg!

I've had chickens for over 30 years, yet "first egg" is still a thrill.

The other was just an opportunity to look closely at something.  I've written before about how most people just glance at life and move on, rather than stopping and really looking.  When I read a book about owls earlier this year, it mentioned how their feather structure allows for silent flight: the front edge of the feather has a very fine, stiff, comb-like structure that breaks up the air, while the back side is soft and wispy to prevent any air vortices.  Well, the museum's barred owl, Mabel, dropped a wing feather, so I was able to study it.  Amazing.

Whew!  That was a ramble.  And I feel like I've missed stuff.  Must stop going two weeks between posts.

Short Random Thought

 Sitting down to my dinner of Massaman curried chickpeas on quinoa.  Quite delicious, BTW.

But suddenly remembering when Saturday night could have meant hot doggities (his dipped in mustard, mine in a mixture of ketchup and barbeque sauce) and a bag of Voodoo spicy chips.

And someone to eat with.

Where did I go wrong?

Catching Up

 And there goes another 2 1/2 weeks.  What can I say.  I survived July, but it's still hot and sticky (heat index 110 today).

Day to day it seems like I'm not doing anything - and then I realized that there is still quite a bit going on.  Reading, for one, as usual.  I was between books, and waiting for Jeff who was thinking about one, so I opened up one of my book collections at random and realized that I had never actually read one of the seminal works of American Literature, Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Meanwhile, as I was getting into it, Jeff did want to read House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski.  So I'm reading both simultaneously.  It's working out, because House is a very strange, very convoluted book (there are three stories happening simultaneously, about a fourth story) which is like trying to read a maze.  Some parts are blank, some upside down, some partially blanked out.  There are three pages of nonsense words that can only be read by taking the first letter of each word.  I find I can only read it when my mind is fairly sharp and I can puzzle it through.  So that's daytime reading, with Uncle Tom being before-bed.

I'm surprised I can walk today.  Hazards of the volunteer job: I got kneecapped by the big goat yesterday.  I went down and he was coming at me again, so all I could do was grab his horns and straight-arm him to keep him from hitting me again.  I didn't want to try to stand because he's very strong and I'd be wrestling him and at the moment I didn't know the condition of my knee.  So - still hanging on to him, I went backwards on my knees until I could shove him aside and roll out the gate.  Surprisingly, when I gingerly stood up, there seemed to be no damage and it's fine today.

Also at the museum I had a good laugh at the owl I posted about last time.  This time Topaz was in her little shelter, too small to spread her wings.  So while I was cleaning, I misted her just for a minute or so.  When I turned to walk away, I heard a soft thud behind me.  I turned, and there she was at my feet, wings spread, glaring at me with a look of "HEY!!  YOU!  Get your ass back here and finish my shower!"  So I did.  Silly bird.

I think in a previous post I mentioned that I was working on a dress to wear to a medieval event "sometime in August."  I just sort of putzed away at it.  I also wanted to weave a belt to go with it, and I need some sort of veil or head cover.  Then it occurred to me that "sometime in August" is the day after tomorrow.  Oops.  Been hustling a bit on that.

I got some business work done sometime in the last 2.5 weeks.  Between the two of us, Bob and I had 5 retirement investment accounts.  His got transferred over to my name.  I was talking to our counselor (because I thought I had to start taking money out of one when I hit 72, which is this year) and they thought it would be more efficient to combine them rather than having separate ones.  That makes sense, and we did it - but it did feel oddly like I was erasing a bit more of Bob.

So I chose not to erase him on another occasion.  Recently, every time I've gone to share something from my phone, the first person to pop up in the "do you want to send it to this person?" list is a guy I haven't heard from in years.  He used to do the haunted trail with us, and he house-sat when we went to Italy 9 years ago.  After this happened a few times, I figured it was a sign to say "hi" so I dropped him a message and did.  We did the usual thing of a few notes back and forth.  I mentioned that Rob and Jeff had moved to another state - but I didn't mention Bob.  Somehow, I liked the idea that in Donny's world Bob was still alive, and I didn't want to take that away.

What else?  Oh, yeah  - a near miss from Hurricane Debby.  It ended up hitting about 40 miles east of me (that would have been this past Monday, the 5th), and it's done some tremendous damage farther up the coast, but I just got some wind and rain. I still need to empty all my jugs of flushing water out of the bathtub (but I've been busy working on the dress, belt, and veil)

In the larger world, I never take an interest in politics and just live with whatever happens (I do at least vote) but I have to say I have spent far too many hours watching news clips.  Suddenly I (like so many people) have gone from a feeling of doom and despair over what the next four years could be to having a bit of hope.  And it's fun to make a bowl of popcorn and just watch the bread and circuses.

 And now for the strange and fun thing.  Mike got an email from a guy  -  Gary Baker - who tracked him down.  Gary is a specialist in (let's say obsessed by) the ICBM missile of the cold war era.  He's working on trying to fill in some gaps in the Atlas F missile program.  These were huge (80 ft. tall, 250,000) pound missiles designed to be stored in underground silos.  Unfortunately, they were rushed to completion . . . and there were design errors.  In a series of silos and missiles (designed to carry nuclear warheads, although thank God they weren't armed) that cost several billion dollars.  The design flaw caused the missiles to explode while they were in the silos (and there are people in there as well).  One blew up in the summer of 1963 - so the obvious solution was to fire the commander and bring in a new one.  The next missile exploded in February 1964, and one after that in March.  At that point, the commander was dragged before a Senate investigation committee for negligence (or maybe even sabotage).  Because who wants to admit to a multi-billion boo-boo?  Eventually he was exonerated, but the whole things was an embarrassment and the commander was sort of shuffle off from post to post an the whole things quietly hushed up and the program discontinued.

So why contact Mike?  Simple - that missile commander had a couple of kids, Mike and his little sister Ann.  We were there.  We remember seeing the mushroom cloud and waiting for hours with Mom to see if Dad had survived (he did, as did his crew).

So Gary is all kinds of excited, because we were there, and he's been peppering us with all kinds of detailed questions.  Alas, I don't know if we're being much help.  My answers largely consist of "Dude - I was 11 years old."  What I know of Dad's work was that he was in the Air Force and he went to work in the morning and come home in the evening.  Gary asked me about a next door neighbor - what unit was he with, and what was his job field. "Uh - he had a dog.  A black lab."  

He's tracing the rest of Dad's career, so he wanted exact dates of when we moved, an what Dad was doing each time.  Well - by the time I was 14 we had moved 9 times, so we're a little fuzzy on the dates.

I was able to do one nice thing.  I had a large framed photograph of one of Dad's missiles (before it blew up), signed by his crew and friends (probably a going away gift).  It seems strange to take a family heirloom and send it to a stranger - but I did.  Mike's OK with it.  My thought for the last several years, since I've been doing serious downsizing, was that someday it would probably end up in Goodwill or a yard sale, being sold for the frame.

So now it's joined his personal museum, and I'm glad that it has a home.  His plan is to digitize it so he can try to analyze the signatures.

He's invited us to some see him and go over the records (he apparently has interviews from people who knew our parents) to see what we can remember.  Normally, I might be a bit "meh" about that.  But here's the kicker:  He's in Roswell, New Mexico (where we lived - and it might be fun to see the old stomping grounds) and he has an Air BnB - in one of the missile silos!

Go  stay in a converted missile silo?  Oh hell yes.  We're going to wait a couple of months so hopefully it won't be a hundred degrees, then we'll go.  How often do you get a chance like that?

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/46711243?source_impression_id=p3_1722740718_P3Waz_8gHVyF16tN

So, year - a busy couple of weeks (and yet the heat still knocks me on my butt most days, and concern about the hurricane took up a couple of days)

Stay tuned.